


headstone

by allonsysouffle



Category: Easy Allies RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Illegal Allies, Other, uh... and existensialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7941961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsysouffle/pseuds/allonsysouffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Ian,” he starts, finally, “Ian, I need to wrap your shoulder.”</p>
  <p>“Or what?”</p>
  <p>“Or you’ll die.”</p>
  <p>In the distance, a gunshot echoes.</p>
</blockquote><p>
in which the wildcard and the control freak are locked in a room with a festering wound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	headstone

"My mouth is a fire escape.

The words coming out

don’t care that they are naked.

There is something burning in there.”

**Andrea Gibson, _I Sing The Body Electric, Especially When My Power’s Out_**

 

Kyle’s frozen in a firefight.

He doesn’t mean to be- he’s never been one for close-up fighting but even a sniper rifle can work in a pinch like this, and he totally _would_ be shooting the cops on his tail- except he can’t move. Or shoot, or aim, or even bring the scope to his eyelid, he’s just standing stock-still in the alleyway with bullets suspended in the air surrounding him. 

It’s a heist gone wrong, it’s always a heist gone wrong, he’d been watching from a rooftop but Brad got himself shot and Huber’s driving back to base with the cash and Ian isn’t talking, because of course she isn’t, because the last thing Kyle heard from her over the comms was “Bossy, shut the fuck up, _jesus_ , stop micro-managing me,” and then- 

_Click_.

Static echoing in his ear.

The roar of a motorcycle.

So, it’s chaos. Kyle ducks out of the way of the cops, firing blindly, snapping out of it, just long enough to get the hell out of dodge and out to the open streets of Los Santos. Blood is in the air- or maybe that’s just the sunset, tipped with deep red and danger, and his heart is racing- but really, when is it not, on a night like this? 

He puts his finger to his earpiece. “Ben. Ben! _Ben_ , tell me Ian’s responding, please, Ben, what’s even happening-”

Something explodes behind him, searing the back of his neck. He doesn’t turn to see, he keeps running, forward, onward, anywhere.

His earpiece crackles with signal static. “Kyle, are you there, I don’t know, it’s chaos- everyone’s offline- where are you? GPS isn’t working, get to a safehouse. And quickly, I swear to god, the whole LSPD is on you, have you heard from Brad?”

“I thought-” Kyle pauses to vault himself over a fence into an apartment complex, and he’s darting down the back alley now, “I thought you had everything under control, what do you mean, is he not talking?”

Ben breathes shakily. “No, no, Brad and Ian are off comms right now- _yeah, Huber, I said I’m handling it, now stop fucking talking_ \- where were they last?”

“I was on a rooftop, I don’t- people were shooting, Ben, it was…” Kyle swears under his breath, trying his best to remember, lost in a city ignited, “Ian had half the cash. All she had was shitty body amor and her stupid pistol, she wanted to be a distraction, she- she got on Mike’s bike,” and he’s hyperventilating a little, now, _c’mon, Bosman, you’re four blocks from the hideout on El Burro and 2nd, you can’t freeze now,_ “and she took off, I swear to god I tried to stop her, Ben, I swear, she’s just-” The hideout is within his sights, there are no sirens, and he’s safe but it doesn’t matter when Ian’s life is up in the goddamn air. She was always the one thing he could never control. So many images flit through his mind, all of Ian in various states of injury, magenta and maroon all thrown together, blood in the air in his nose on her cheek, and he’s stammering, “she’s just…”, and Ben is yelling something but his ears are ringing, so he focuses on the safehouse again-

A shadow flits by the curtained window.

A flash of pink cloth.

“Stubborn,” he finishes, breath leaving his body; pink has always been Ian’s colour.

“Kyle? Kyle, are you still there? I just heard from Brad, said he’s safe, he’s bunkered down in Murietta Heights with an old buddy who’s patching him up… Kyle? Hello? What’s going on?”

He slips through the door, not checking if he’s being followed or not. “Found her,” he murmurs, and Ben laughs but it’s trembling, Ian’s cleaning out a bullet wound in her arm on the patchy couch in the dusty sunset light, her stupid bright magenta shirt half-off, chest smeared with red and Kyle barely stops himself from breaking out into a relieved grin.

She’s alive. That’s all that matters.

Ben’s talking in his ear but he isn’t listening. Ian looks up, innocent eyes, cracking a smile. “Took you long enough, Bossy.”

He keeps his face blank. “I’d suggest that you turn on your earpiece.”

She raises an eyebrow and does so. It comes to life with the squeal of a microphone and a frustrated yell.

“Ian, what the _FUCK-_ ”

“Ben, you were distracting me,” she interrupts him with a wince. “I couldn’t concentrate with you yammering in my fucking ear, okay?”

“I was ‘yammering’ _instructions_. That you _needed_. To _survive_.”

“I did well enough on my own, didn’t I?” She lets out a hiss as blood drips from the makeshift canvas bandage she’s hastily wrapped around her shoulder. Kyle clicks his tongue and stoops to re-wrap it, shaking his head.

The knot is an ugly red; the wrapping is unevenly spaced and far too tight. He swallows the bile rising in his throat. “You’re really terrible at tying bandages, Ian.” She’s too exhausted to insult him back but makes do with sticking her tongue out and rolling her eyes.

“You’re hurt.” Ben’s voice is quiet. “What happened.”

“Got shot,” she mumbles, grunting when Kyle tightens the canvas, her ragged red nails digging into the arm of the couch. 

“You got shot, you got _shot_ , yeah, of course, why am I not surprised?”

“Shut up about it, I’ll be fine, you know I will.”

Kyle almost argues, but instead sets his gun down on the shitty plastic table and perches next to Ian on the couch, absent-mindedly tugging her shirt back down over her stomach. “And Brad? How’s he doing?”

Another static crackle. “Hey, Bosman, I’m good over here.” Brad pauses. “After Ben yelled at me for five goddamn minutes straight, but yeah, I’m doing okay.”

Ian shoots Kyle a pointed look and a smirk. Kyle stifles a laugh. “Glad you're good. And Huber?”

“Yeah, I’m back at base with Mr. Angry-Comms over here,” Huber chimes in with the jolt of a bumped microphone and a strangled sigh from Ben.

“You got the money?”

“Half of it.”

“Well,” Ian says, glancing at the black duffel bag at her feet, “I’d mark that one down as a success.”

“Fuck you,” says Ben. And then, “I hate managing comms.”

“We got like forty-thousand dollars, you goon.”

“And two of us got _shot_ ,” Ben counters, voice cracking. “Stay there. Lie low for an hour or so. Don’t… don’t do anything risky.”

Ian scoffs. Kyle shakes his head and fiddles with the wire of his earpiece. “Don’t worry, Ben, I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”

“Oh, now you’re, what, the boss of me?” Ian laughs bitterly. “Yeah, sure, hey, y’know what, let’s put the control freak and the wildcard in the same room and see what happens, that’s a _great_ fucking plan.”

Huber gets on the mic again. “You guys are actually a good team when you work together.”

“Shut up, Huber, we’re terrible together and you know it.” Ian hobbles over to the sink and fills a clouded glass with water. 

Kyle buries the sick feeling in his stomach. “Uh, I’m not a control freak.”

“Uh, dude,” says Brad, “you literally pointed a gun at Huber yesterday when he put too many sugars in your coffee.”

“That’s inconsequential.”

“It was scary!” Huber whines.

They hear a clacking noise over the mic. Ben swears under his breath. “Guys? You might want to stay holed up in your safehouses for a while longer.”

Kyle frowns. “Why, Ben, what’s wrong?”

“Cops.” The word is drawn out and heavy. “Lots of them. Order went out over the radio that they’re gonna be looking for us all night.”

Ian sets her cup down, casts her eyes on Kyle and a smile spreads across her face. “Sleepover!”

 

* * *

 

‘Sleepover’, unfortunately, does not mean that they get to eat popcorn and paint each other’s nails.

Ian’s fast asleep on the raggedy couch and Kyle has been relegated to the musty carpet with possibly the thinnest blanket that has ever been manufactured. She’s injured, so it makes sense that she gets the better spot, but he’s tired of tossing and turning- and besides, he can’t sleep with the constant whir of sirens in his ears and the creeping threat of being found. 

So he pushes himself off the floor and sits gingerly at the small table in the corner of the room. There’s a tiny tinted window on the wall across from him, so he watches as the lights dance in blue and red, and the moon creeps ever upwards. It’s nice- to turn his brain off, for a while, to just wait. To not have to act and act and strategize. An hour passes. His earpiece lies silent on the kitchenette counter.

“ _Bosman_.”

The word is whispered. Almost imperceptible under the sirens’ whine. Kyle’s heart begins to beat very quickly.

The whisper comes again. “Bosman?” Slightly louder now. Kyle stands up.

“Ian?” he calls, quietly. No response. “Are you awake?”

There’s silence for a moment. Time stretches. “I’m bleeding.”

“Is it bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” Kyle’s brain stops working for a second. The words don’t connect to an image. Blinking hard and swallowing, he grabs the roll of canvas from the table and darts back to the couch. The light is so low but Ian’s shirt is blotched with seeping blackness and Kyle very nearly drops the bandages; he didn’t realize his hands were shaking so much but they are, which is strange, which isn’t normal but he concentrates on stripping off her shirt. It’s ugly- the bandage has unravelled completely and the bullet wound in her shoulder is crusted. Her eyes are open, which is good, but they’re cloudy and stare blankly at the ceiling.

“What did you do,” he asks, tossing the ruined shirt in the corner of the room.

“Was sleepin’.”

He rests his open palm on her shoulder- the one that’s now drenched in black blood. “You reopened the wound, idiot.”

“Don’t call me that.” Her voice is stronger now. She hisses as his pointer finger brushes over the wound. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

He unrolls some canvas. “I have to wrap this up.”

“Don’t fucking _touch_ me!” She wrests her arm away from his grip and scoots backwards, sitting up, knees tucked against her chest. The space under her left eye is glinting.

Kyle puts his arms up and surrenders, placing the roll of canvas on the carpet. HIs fingers are shaking more than ever now; it would be pointless to even try. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”

She rests her chin on her knees. The blood from her shoulder is staining the couch pillows. “Thank you.”

They’re quiet for a while longer. The wound dries up. Kyle has so much to say but he can’t, knows it’ll start a fight, knows she’ll be angry, knows he won’t be allowed to help.

“Ian,” he starts, finally, “Ian, I need to wrap your shoulder.”

“Or what?”

“Or you’ll die.”

In the distance, a gunshot echoes.

Ian gingerly rests her arm on the back of the couch. “You sure?”

“It’ll infect or you’ll tear it open again and you’ll bleed out.”

She looks at the door. “Whatever.”

“Whatever?” Kyle can’t keep the incredulity from creeping into his voice. “I just said you might die, and you say _‘whatever’_?”

“I’ll die one day anyway.” She glances down. “Besides, I’ve been through worse shit.”

“Right, okay, yeah, a bullet through the deltoid and you’ve _been through worse_.”

“It doesn’t even hurt.” The words catch in her teeth.

He watches her lips twist into a forced smile and shakes his head. “You’re lying.”

“So what if I am?” She turns her body away from him. The moonlight from the tinted window falls across her face in broad pale strokes. “So fucking what, Bosman. So, so, I got hurt. Fine. We’re a crew. Shit happens. And I-” she bites her bottom lip, “and I survive. I always do. I’m stubborn. But if I die, I die, and that’s just what happens. So, so, so fucking _what?_ ” Her voice breaks. Her throat is raw from holding back tears. 

“So, I need to wrap your stupid wound, Ian.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Death should scare you,” Kyle says suddenly.

Ian turns her head slightly, still not looking at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It’s dark.

It’s blinding.

“Well, it doesn’t,” she says into the darkness. Casual and carrying.

“I’m saying it should.”

“Why?” Her laugh is thoughtless and broken. Betraying some kind of cracked visage.

Kyle exhales. “There’s nothing- after. Just the blackness. Static. Not even static, not even that. That doesn’t scare you? The silence?”

She grins. She’s still decidedly not looking at his face, but her gaze slides across his hands, quick trigger finger tapping out a hasty message she can’t decode on the couch arm. “Not more than life.”

He’s staring openly at her now. “You’re a very strange person.”

“You’re a very scared one.”

“Cautious,” he corrects. “I’m cautious. And I _like_ living.”

“What’s wrong with the dark?” she fires back, sharp, too loudly. “What’s wrong with static and- and _nothing?_ Isn’t that better than, than _this?_ This chaos? We could die at any second in this fucking city. So, so what are you really scared of? Death? Or dying?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Everything!”

“Dying and death mean the exact same thing,” Kyle scoffs, turning away. “They’re the same word. I don’t want to die, Ian.”

“I don’t want to die either, I’m just saying it doesn’t scare me,” she replies. “I’m saying, what’s the point of being scared? Risk is risk. It’s not like eternal nothingness _hurts_.” She sighs. “You’re only scared because you haven’t really lived yet, have you? Kyle? That’s your problem, right? That’s always been your problem.” 

She’s watching his face, now, the way his left eye twitches just barely, the way he bites his lip. The way he suddenly seems to get it, a sharp intake of breath and a worried glance and the settling of air in his chest.

He sighs, deeply. “Maybe… maybe I just don’t want to lose you.”

She blinks. “What?”

He can’t stop himself now. “I want you to be scared of death because _I don’t want you to die,_ Ian,” he says, quick-fire and thoughtless, like a spillage. “Maybe- maybe I don’t want you to do stupid crap like, what was it, _right_ , driving Huber’s motorcycle through _police fire_. Or treat a bullet wound like it’s a blister, maybe I don’t want to see you hurt, maybe I _worry_ ,” and he’s half-shouting now, the words falling out of his mouth awkward and broken, “and maybe I feel a lot of things, okay? Not just… not just scared.”

Ian brings her hand to her lips. “Bosman-”

“Maybe,” he’s rambling, and this was a mistake and he knows it, “maybe my problem with death isn’t about me. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s always been about you.”

“What the- what the hell are you saying?”

He looks down. “I’m saying… please don’t die on me.”

“No, what are you really saying?” Her eyes glint.

“I’m _saying_ that I-”

Before he can finish, she kisses him.

She kisses him velvet, and it’s sudden but it seems to take years, careful and rich and longing and terrified. She kisses him breathless and worried and damned. She kisses him and it’s so dark and so warm and something inside both of them snaps in two. Their foreheads knock together and her wet fingers smear her blood on his temple and it is brutality and it is torture and it isn’t love, no, not quite, but almost.

Neither of them are smiling.

“Don’t,” is all Kyle says after. Breath hot on her cheek. “Don’t, don’t, Ian, don’t.”

A salacious grin. “Why not?” The words are light and tantalizing. 

“I can’t.”

“What’s wrong?”

Their mouths are still so close. He barely has to murmur. “This should scare you.”

She kisses him again, and this time it’s desperate, and this time he kisses back, like it hurts, like he means it.

“Are _you_ scared?” she whispers into his mouth.

Kyle swallows. “Yes.”

“Do you like this?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Should I stop?”

He stares at her. Outlines stark in the dim moonlight, painting her cheeks in charcoal and shimmer.

“No.”

 

It’s dark.

It’s blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> hello i just realized im really rusty at gta fics.. also hinckman is real good  
> hope you enjoyed <3
> 
> my twitter is saltwaterrayne and my tumblr is finalbosman!


End file.
